The Distance Between Us Rerynna Grande

Pentecost (2014) compares The Distance Between Us: A memoir with Rudolfo Anaya and Tomas Rivera’s major work as an attempt to capture the cultural identity of Mexican Americans concluding that the main protagonist of these works had to set outside their cultural boundaries to find their cultural identity. Ruf (2009) unlike Pentecost (2014) emphases the uniqueness of Grande’s work as she highlights that even though Across a Hundred Mountains is a fiction work it is based on Grade’s real experiences and fears. Unlike most immigration novels that are usually narrated from a male perspective, Grande’s narrative of a young girl denounces attention to gender inequalities and intersectionalities among immigrants (Bürkner, 2012) (Ruf, 2009). In addition, critics see Reyna Grande as an honest writer that uses her personal experiences for the development of an immigrant narrative and whose novel is underscored with personal truths (Olivas, 2006) (Coca, 2009). While this literature explore Grande’s work they do not pay attention to the representation of her personal and/or her fictional character Juana’s identity formation, when it is a fundamental characteristic of her

Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the

The second to youngest of the Grande children, Reyna, who is much more of a supportive friend than is a sister, would always boost everyone’s confidence in the memoir. Therefore, it gives confidence to everyone in order to succeed. Reyna was always the most baby in the memoir but Mago changed that and taught her how to be brave in the time of need. Reyna looks up to Mago the most because Mago is the only one who notices what she does. Carlos supports Reyna, but he’s also going on away trips to find a decent father role model. Mago once told Reyna that, “it doesn’t matter that there’s a distance between us now. That cord is there forever” (21). Mago wasn’t Reyna’s real mom; she tried her best to be the best she could be for not only Reyna but for Carlos and Betty too.

Although the stories may be based on something entirely different or have a genre of drama or fantasy the character can often be alone, and isolated in their emotional state. When reading Al Colegio by Carmen Laforet, you can gather the sense of isolation from the characterisation approaches associated with the character of the mother. Al Colegio is a short story about a mother taking her daughter to school for the first time; it takes places in the one day and some flashbacks through memories. We learn about the character of the mother, and the characterisation in the story is very indirect, we do not learn about the character directly, we are rather shown the character, through action and emotion, “Cuando medito una de estas escapadas, uno de estos paseos, me parece divertido ver la chispa alegre que se le enciende a ella en los ojos, y pienso que me gusta infinitamente salir con mi hijita mayor o oírla charlar;” . From this you learn that they take this walk so that the mother, the main character, can see the happy emotions cross her daughters face, and the mother admits to going out with her daughter more to hear her talk. Which still hints at the main character bring alienated in society, there is just the two of them, walking so she can hear her talk that little bit more, even the description of the society that

Another way tension and distance is created in the passages is when the narrator feels that her parent is being selfish and not giving a thought about her. In the passage Tortilla Sun, in paragraph 34 it states "Opportunity? For me? Or for you?" This quote is showing how the narrator feels that her parent is finding and opportunity for the parent’s sake and not for her. In the next paragraph of the passage Tortilla Sun, it states "I stormed off to my room and threw myself onto my bed. I ached inside." This quote shows that the choice made by her mother, which is making the narrator live in New Mexico with Nana, forms tension because she is mad with her mother for making her leave in the summer

Alma feels afraid, trapped, and insecure about this unknown country, America, when she comes here for the first time. It all makes Alma dreadfully homesick for her friends, neighbors, and family in Mexico because of those bad conditions and the unfamiliar place. She does not know how to speak English; therefore, she has not known any neighbor to talk with. Also, the things do not occur like expectation. In fact, the life in the U.S. is worse than in Mexico. However, even if she knows that, she still makes up her minds to move here. Alma starts missing her former home in Mexico, for her and her husband lived there since they were born. When she stays home by herself, the feeling of missing is stronger than any other

You can see how Maria’s El Salvador is empty of people, full only of romantic ideas. Jose Luis’s image of El Salvador, in contrast, totally invokes manufactured weapons; violence. Maria’s “self-projection elides Jose Luis’s difference” and illustrates “how easy it is for the North American characters, including the big-hearted María, to consume a sensationalized, romanticized, or demonized version of the Salvadoran or Chicana in their midst” (Lomas 2006, 361). Marta Caminero-Santangelo writes: “The main thrust of the narrative of Mother Tongue ... continually ... destabilize[s] the grounds for ... a fantasy of connectedness by emphasizing the ways in which [Maria’s] experience as a Mexican American and José Luis’s experiences as a Salvadoran have created fundamentally different subjects” (Caminero-Santangelo 2001, 198). Similarly, Dalia Kandiyoti points out how Maria’s interactions with José Luis present her false assumptions concerning the supposed “seamlessness of the Latino-Latin American connection” (Kandiyoti 2004, 422). So the continual misinterpretations of José Luis and who he really is and has been through on Maria’s part really show how very far away her experiences as a middle-class, U.S.-born Chicana are from those of her Salvadoran lover. This tension and resistance continues throughout their relationship.

Women themselves perpetuate their inferiority; the author recounts a moment in her life when her emotional connection with her mother was interrupted abruptly by a telephone call from her brother. In this instance, the mother chose to speak with her son, the Chicano, over her daughter, the Chicana.

In The Distance Between Us, Reyna Grande describes of her life, how she came to this country with difficulties. Grande was young that it was really hard for her to understand the circumstances that were happening to her and her family. The relationship between the two passages is the different directions, but their purpose is similar. The purpose of the two passages explains the struggle of how a family from a different country is going to survive without any help. The first excerpt, ‘Mi Mama Mi Ama,’ describes the tension and confusion of the writer’s early stage of her life. They run from there to here to survive and for their new and hopeful lives. This is before she moved to the United States and the first night that she spent with eating bird food. The second excerpt, ‘The Man Behind the Glass,’ describes Grande’s and her siblings’ first day of school. As they have the same purpose, to survive, they conflict from getting ready to go to school, because they don’t know a word of English. Grande’s father can’t help them either because he doesn’t know how to speak English.

In Castillo’s three-stanza poem, she starts off by using the literary device of symbolism. As one reads this poem, it is quickly realized that it is a narrative and easy to follow along with. Compared with some other flowy and fancy poetry, “Christmas, 1970,” is a bit different. In the first stanza, Castillo talks in the present tense, as they put together a Christmas tree during their first Christmas in the United States, an unfamiliar territory. Castillo uses the device of symbolism to support her overall theme. She states “Mother finds herself opening,

The Distance Between Us a memoir written by Reyna Grande, she tells a coming-of-age story and experiences on her hometown, Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico to relocate to Los Angeles, California in order to have a life with full of opportunities. Grande was part of the serial immigration, so she was following her parents coming to the United States, “El Otro Lado, the other side”(4). Grande uses Spanish diction, rhetorical questions, and visual rhetoric to provide ideas about her experience as an immigrant trying to adapt into Mexican and American societies, in order to draw the reader into her world. Through literary devices, Grande makes the reader to identify with her immigration story even if they are not Mexicans or immigrants. The Story is

The novel Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande is a story about two young girls and their struggling journey to find happiness between two conflicting and distinct worlds: the United States and Mexico. Juana on one side wants to get to the United States, or “el otro lado” as mentioned in the novel, to find her father who abandoned her and her mother after leaving to find work in the US. On the other hand Adelina escapes from her house in California to follow her lover to Mexico. The girls form a bond in the most unexpected of places, a Tijuana jail, and quickly form a friendship that will connect them for the rest of their lives.

Currently Sandra Cisneros resides in San Antonio in a purple house and she describes herself as “nobody’s mother” and “nobody’s wife.” Both Frida Kahlo’s and Cynthia Y. Hernandez’s works convey the idea of having one’s culture limit one’s freedom and individuality. Cisneros and Esperanza are both victims of this idea and realize that the only way to live one’s life freely is to defy the roles and limitations created by one’s culture.

Nevertheless, instead of the satisfaction he expected from his wife about her new house, Mamacita seems to feel discontented about it. “She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would. Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming and you can hear it all the way down the street” (p. 77). Mamacita gets extremely nostalgic about her pink house in Mexico. Her complaints make her now-irritated husband to yell and force her to stay in her house on Mango Street. To make matters even worse, her baby boy begins to imitate an English commercial he has heard on television. The book mentions, “… the baby boy, who has begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial… No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she can’t believe her ears” (p. 78). Mamacita’s child has begun to speak English, a language that she can’t interpret at all. The thought that her family relies on English devastates Mamacita, and this makes her feel completely torn apart. In the end, Mamacita refuses to learn English and assimilate to the people around her, so she becomes isolated and lonely.

She said this though she was Mexican too. But she was born here in the U.S, and he was born there, and it’s not the same, you know” (Cisneros 68). This also shows Clemencia’s boundary living. In an interview with Aranda, Sandra Cisneros dramatizes the double unbelonging through Clemencia’s inability to function in either Anglo or Mexican discourse (Wyatt). With the imagery portrayed of both sides of the border, the reader can clearly imagine exactly what Clemencia’s mother means with this statement.